Depression...

Depression.

What can be done to help it or mask its pain?

Take medication?

Go to therapy?

We are advised to do these things to numb the pain, to bury the demons we try so hard to get rid of. We are advised that the professionals know how we feel, how we function, and how we live. But in fact, we are the only ones who know how it is to live with demons that eat us from the inside out!

Talking?

What good does it do to us?

Who would we feel we could talk to without being made fun of or mocked?

It doesn't take the pain we feel away. It doesn't take away the thoughts we have. And it doesn't take away the self-guilt we have bottled up to feel of being alive and breathing when we just simply don't want to anymore.

Imagination?

You think this is down to imagination?

You think that all this pain and suffering is make believe?

The brain changes and evolves around this illness and defect of the human emotions. The brain makes this illness seem like once it is there, there is no going back or getting help.

Not everyone has managed to build up the courage to seek professional or medical help that we need. Not everyone has "the right frame of mind" to be like everyone who is considered to have a "normal" life.

If we weren't constantly told:

• ''It's a phase."
• "Nothing is wrong."
• "It's all in your head."
• "Get over it."

All these words or phrases and more are what other people use most of the time and they cause more damage and hurt than the illness itself.

When we don't want to leave our bed, when we don't want to leave our home, or when we don't want to leave our safe place because within these personal and preferred environments there is no one but us, in our safe place we feel nothing but comfort, we feel nothing but safe. In our safe place, no one can harm us, misjudge us, or be disappointed in us when we aren't able to do this or do that.

Having this illness can most of the time feel and seem like our own mind is a trap that could snap at any moment. It can feel like we are not capable of doing simple day to day things so we have no other choice to give up or give in to the demons. You may say, "Why?" Why put yourself through "going off the deep end"? And the answer is simple we don it because it is much harder fighting against the illness rather than letting your defences down. So, when we "go off the deep end," we are not making it harder for ourselves. We are simply making the journey less stormy.

For all the people who suffer from this pain and torture of an illness, don't forget that we are stronger than we think. You don't have to give an explanation to anyone.

Living with anything that is skin deep is 100 percent harder than you think. Everyday depression is different, every isolation is different, every recovery is different, and every reason is different.

But we still need to be loved like everyone else—sometimes we need more love than we think we deserve. We still need more kindness than we think we deserve. But most importantly we need to be more understood than we think we are because when we are understood we are less mean to ourselves as we know that someone out there has the knowledge they need to help us.